


Baby, You're a Haunted House

by jessequicksters



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, F/F, F/M, Gen, Halloween, Haunted Houses, Horror Tropes, M/M, Magic, Monsters, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27015322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Team STAR Labs and the Riverdale gang spend a Halloween night at Greendale's Haunted House. It's a spookfest.(With maze-like rooms, ghoulish costumes, an undercurrent of dark magic, and a creepy Eobard Thawne talking to everyone through the intercom.)
Relationships: Archie Andrews/Munroe "Mad Dog" Moore, Barry Allen/Iris West, Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the product of me trying to cross out too many bingo prompts at once - will be updating every few days up until Halloween!
> 
> ps. some scary things might happen; so don't read if you don't want your faves to (potentially) meet their demise (probably not permanently)
> 
> that's all from me, HAVE FUN AND ENJOY <3

“Whose idea was it to go to Greendale for Halloween again?” Wally asks, pushing his head in between Caitlin and Dr. Wells at the front of the van.

Caitlin doesn’t take her eyes off the road as she keeps her hands steady on the wheel. They drive over a particularly large pothole and the van shakes violently, as the sound of squelching mud wrings out some majorly bad vibes out of Wally. Someone hits their head in the back of the van—probably Barry, as it’s met with Iris’ soft ‘oh, honey’ in response. 

Everyone’s dressed up one way or another. Caitlin’s gone for a classic witch look. Iris and Barry have gone as Daphne and Freddy from Scooby Doo. Cisco is Indiana Jones and Wally thinks he’s done a pretty decent Dracula. Dr. Wells is the only one who didn’t dress up – with the excuse that he’d forgotten the time after a long day of work.

“The same person who painted this entire STAR Labs van to look like the Mystery Machine,” Caitlin finally answers, as Dr. Wells casts her a glance of concern. She nods in response to his wordless looks, and Wally sees his hand briefly brushing against hers.

“Hey!” Cisco calls out from behind, “We haven’t done anything fun since the entire city became a breeding ground for meta-criminals – the closest we’ve had to celebrating Halloween was when The Trickster set off exploding pumpkins all over the city, and I refuse to let that be my last Halloween.”

“You’re not dying tonight, Cisco,” Wally says.

“Well, if I _were_ to cut the cord on my candle tonight, I’d rather be reminiscing about good times with my friends, rather than close calls with jolly ghoul serial killers. Besides, Dr. Wells recommended this place.”

Caitlin turns to him. “You did?”

“I used to go, with my wife and I, when we were much younger. Really, you should all consider yourselves fortunate to only have to deal with the metas in Central City. Greendale is where the real trouble brews.”

“Ooh, I sense a ghost story,” Cisco says.

“Historically, Greendale’s always been a superstitious town,” Iris points out. “Witches, magic, the Greendale thirteen. . .”

“What’s the Greendale thirteen?” Barry asks.

Before Iris gets to answer, the van grinds to a halt. A silence swallows the air. Among the wet marshlands, the stark silver moon and the foggy skies, a truly terrifying mansion stands. It looks like it's been growing out of the ground for centuries. 

Wally’s not superstitious. None of them are - they’re all scientists at heart. So, a haunted house should be a walk in the park compared to what they face on the daily, right? But despite the powers of reason and logic, no one wants to be the first to step out of the van.

The lights turn on in the mansion without warning and everyone inside jumps.

Dr. Wells finally breaks the silence. “Shall we begin, then?”


	2. nobody reads the fine print

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been over two years since graduation and the gang's all back together. Betty reminisces on everything that's changed since - and what's stayed the same. Jughead, for one, is still too suspicious for his own good.

Betty thought that she’d left behind the days of nightmares and terrors a long time ago. It’s strange, getting the gang back together like this – for a night of sinister affairs, none the less – and she’s a lot more nervous that she’d like to admit at this moment.

There’s a little pop-up shed right next to the mansion, where visitors are meant to collect their entry stamps and sign a bunch of waivers. Two women, with white veils over their faces, go through the laundry list of instructions for them.

“Are you sure this place isn’t a thinly-veiled murder dungeon?” Veronica asks, signing away at the forms with her perfectly manicured nails.

Even with her Cinderella ballgown on, she’s still wearing her signature pearl bracelet and necklace. Guess she never broke ties with the family, after all. She’s also brought her cousin with her tonight, Hartley Rathaway, who’s a scientist of some sorts. He’s nice enough, if not a little stuck up.

The ride here was strange, but not unbearable. It’s been nearly three years since graduation and while a lot has changed, nothing has. Cheryl and Toni, dressed as Persephone and Hades, are still in love as ever. Archie and Munroe – well, that was new, but not entirely a surprise – were still their warm, joyous selves. They're dressed as Victorian vampire hunters and drove them all here in their brand-new truck.

Betty hasn’t exactly spoken to Jughead since they broke up in freshman year of college. They always seemed to miss each other when they came back to Riverdale during term breaks. It never bothered her, but it does make tonight slightly more nerve-wracking than it should be.

“Hey,” Jughead says, walking over to Betty with the form in his hand.

“Hi,” Betty smiles.

“Notice anything weird about this?” he asks, pointing at the form with his quill. He’s dressed as zombie Shakespeare. His hair’s grown out since the last time she saw him. It lands on the puffy sleeves on his shoulders. It looks nice. Suits him.

“You mean besides the fact that they’re not liable for our potential deaths?” Betty smiles. “What’s new?”

Jughead brushes a hand through his hair and chuckles softly. “It _is_ Greendale. But look at the fine print that runs on the side of the pages, it’s written in some sort of script.”

Betty exhales, raising her shoulders. “It’s decorative. You know what they’re like in Greendale. Satanic branding and all.”

“We don’t know what it means,” Jughead presses on.

Betty shakes her head. She’s not doing this—she’s not falling for this again. This whole mystery-madness that sucks everybody in and leaves them for dead. Ever since she left Riverdale, she made a promise to herself that she would stop looking for trouble. She has a good life. She goes to a good, normal school and is working towards a serious career in journalism. She can’t go chasing ghosts anymore. It’s not who she is. Not anymore, at least.

“I think the others are waiting for us,” Betty says, cocking her head towards the rest of their friends, standing in front of the mansion.

Jughead pauses, but eventually gives in and signs on the paper. “You’re right. Fun night out. Careful with this, Miss Kyle,” he says as he passes on the quill to her.

She smiles through her Catwoman-mask and leather garb. It feels a little silly, and a little reminiscent of the old times, but at least it keeps her warm in this chilly October evening.

She grabs it to sign her name on the form—and accidentally pricks her finger, drawing blood.


	3. ghosts of our past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cisco stays close by Dr. Wells, who's rummaging through secret doors a little too confidently for his liking. They bump into Hartley Rathaway and his cousin, Veronica Lodge, who proceeds to lash out on them like a banshee on Hallow's Eve.

Cisco’s aware of just how close he’s sticking by Dr. Wells as they’re exploring the Great Halls. After they signed their souls away to a bunch of forms outside, they were told that there’s a prize for the bravest visitors of the Greendale Haunted House. Requirements to win seemed pretty simple: all they had to do was meet as a group in the cemetery at sundown.

They would get a bunch of souvenirs and a free weekend stay at Lilith’s Coven for their next visit – an atmospheric witches’ cottage, that served the best suppers in the Midwest, apparently. Winners also get their photos featured on the Greendale Haunted House website. (It had an **ERROR 404..?!!** message the last Cisco checked, but whatever.)

It was already midnight, so six hours inside a Haunted House seemed do-able. Hell, he’s heard of people surviving forty-hour challenges in Haunted Houses before.

Besides, they had superpowers. If anything goes sideways, they’ve got an easy out.

“How are you feeling, Cisco?” Dr. Wells asks, the mechanical whirring of the wheelchair drifting away. He’s heading towards the main staircase, decorated in clotted blood and cobwebs, with large, dramatic candles running up each side. The staircase itself has a wheelchair ramp on the side of it – but Dr. Wells doesn’t seem to be going up, but rather under it.

“Uh, just peachy,” Cisco gulps, skittling behind as the rest of the gang began breaking off into various rooms. “Hey, Dr. Wells? I think we should stick together for the night. You don’t mind, do you?”

He smirks, diving underneath a curtain of rotting ivy. “Why, Cisco? Got a bad vibe about this particular door or something?”

He’s rattling away at a doorknob beneath the stairs very persistently. Does he know that something’s under there?

Cisco then remembers that he’s been here before and chuckles in relief. Right. It's probably a nostalgia thing. Not like he's deliberately looking for trouble. Besides, Dr. Wells doesn’t like it when people fuss over him – which, is understandable, the man is perfectly capable of taking care of himself – but these doubts aren't exactly about him.

He turns around and notices Iris and Wally disappearing into a creaky elevator that starts rumbling as it moves upwards. Cisco can see their shadows in the faint orange light. Caitlin’s disappeared up the stairs, while Barry got roped in with some college kids wandering around.

The doorknob sounds like it’s about to break in Dr. Wells’ hand until it finally cracks open.

Two people immediately spill out, coughing and batting soot away from their faces – and Cisco swears he’s looking right at a ghost.

“Hartley,” Dr. Wells says, giving them ample space to come out. He looks genuinely surprised – a rare expression in the catalogue of Wells expressions. “I certainly wouldn’t have expected to see you here.”

Hartley straightens himself up, dressed up as a glitter-adorned Phantom. He’s standing next to a young woman dressed up as Cinderella, with a considerable amount of pearls on her. Cisco wonders if they’re real – and if so, why one would wear them to a Haunted House.

“Well, well,” Hartley says from behind the mask. “This place really _has_ dragged out the dead.”

He glances at Cisco and Dr. Wells with a cracked smile, while the girl next to them folds her arms and steps in between them.

“You know these people, Hartley?” she asks.

“Veronica Lodge, meet Dr. Harrison Wells and Cisco Ramon from STAR Labs. Dr. Wells and Cisco, meet Veronica Lodge, my cousin from Riverdale.”

“These are the quacks who ruined your career?” Veronica asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Cisco says. “Who are you calling _quacks?”_

Dr. Wells simply raises a hand. “It’s all right, Cisco. Hartley’s lost faith in the work that we do. It’s a shame you left Central City before you could truly see the real results of the particle accelerator.”

“Leaving your best scientist out to dry doesn’t make you seem like a man anyone should have faith in,” Veronica says, steely eyed. “I know a lot about men who parade themselves around as saviours. False gods. Fathers who turn out to be sinners.”

A bit on the nose, Cisco thinks. She might as well be bashing them over the head with a glass slipper in one hand and a cross in the other.

Hartley pats her back gently and adjusts the tiara on her head. “It’s all right, V. I’d rather spend time with my real family tonight, rather than the one I made the mistake to trust all those years ago.”

Veronica takes a breath and nods. “Very well, then. It was a pleasure meeting you both.”

Cisco hears the clacking of her glass slippers fading away as they walk away. Hartley simply waves them off before disappearing into the dark.

“I can’t believe there are two of them,” Cisco grumbles, before turning back to Dr. Wells.

Except—Dr. Wells is now gone. And so is the chair.

He reaches for the doorknob and yells with the desperation of ten full moons: “Dr. Wells! Dr. Wells, are you in there? _Dr. Wells!”_


	4. wicked witch of the north

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toni and Cheryl enter the Maiden's Chambers, where they find a strange witch talking to herself in the mirror.

Toni Topaz is _not_ a superstitious person.

Which makes things a little tricky when you’re dating an almost-witch. She says almost, because Cheryl isn’t the type to study these practices seriously, like the witches of Greendale do. She just happens to speak to her dead twin brother sometimes.

And yes, she’s been through grief counselling and therapy and the entire ten-point checklist they used to hand out in Riverdale High, when murders happened every other week – they never did hand them out to kids in the Southside, funny how selective trauma can be.

So she’s seen it all before, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t get spooked.

A lady, wearing a black witches dress and a hat, is standing in the corner of the Maiden’s Chambers, talking to herself while looking at a floor-length mirror. It’s too dark to see her face in the reflection, and Toni doesn’t want to go any closer to find get a better look.

“I’m not afraid,” the witch mutters quietly. “I’m not afraid. I can prove it. I’m not afraid.”

Toni nudges Cheryl on the shoulder. “Babe?”

Cheryl is pre-occupied with other things, specifically the furnishings in this room. She’s running her hands over the dusty cabinets, filled with eyeballs and jars of pickled whatnots.

“This is made of Blossom maple wood,” she says, accusingly. “We _never_ traded with Greendale. Nana Rose deemed this place too cursed. These miscreants must have stolen it from our farm.”

“Oh,” Toni says, absentmindedly, still checking out the strange woman in the corner. Was she an actor? Was she going to turn around and jump at them at any point? Maybe she was going to smash the mirror into a million pieces on the floor in some overdramatic fashion.

“This sham of a Haunted House will receive a formal complaint from me. Unbelievable—the things people think they can get away with.”

The woman in the corner stretches her neck with an audible crack. There’s a sudden chill in the room.

“What’s there to be afraid of?” she whispers, ghastly cold, and touches the mirror. It freezes over.

“Toni, will you come down with me to teach those two wenches at the ticket booth a lesson?”

Toni shakes her head. This can’t be happening. She feels something on her nose and realizes that it’s a snowflake. She looks up and sees snow falling all around them.

“Cheryl, are you seeing this?”

Cheryl turns around, only mildly inconvenienced, and scrunches her nose at the chunks of snow falling on her face.

“I thought this was Halloween, not Christmas,” she says.

The witch turns around and reveals her face, ice-white, with purple-black lips that looked like frozen veins.

“And who are _you_ supposed to be? Jack Frost’s scorned mother?” Cheryl says.

“Caity, Caity. Always so scared,” she says, seemingly to herself. She looks Toni and Cheryl up and down. If this is some elaborate Greendale-Halloween lore that she’s about to tell them, she’s setting the stage pretty well. “Don't worry, I'll take over from here.”

“Hello? Earth to the Wicked Witch of the North?”

“Don’t play games with me,” she says to Cheryl.

Cheryl simply smiles, all lipstick red antagonism. “On the contrary, we’ve paid to participate in whatever games you have planned for us. So, go ahead—take us through your Halloween sob story and we shall move on to the next room.”

“You think I’m one of these pathetic acts?” she laughs, tilting her head back.

“You described yourself as pathetic, not I,” Cheryl replies.

The ice-witch bites her tongue and rolls her eyes. Something tells Toni to run at this very moment – and she’s generally very good at trusting her instincts, so she takes Cheryl by the hand and drags her away. But it’s too little too late, as the woman shoots icicles out of her hands and one blast envelops Cheryl’s entire hand.

The scream queen screams for her life – and Toni knows that this is going to send reverberations through the entire mansion.


	5. stairway to hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Archie and Barry are on a scavenger hunt in one of the mansion's old spires. Something lives in these walls. Barry soon realizes that Archie is keeping a dark secret that puts them all in danger.

“What was that?” Barry says, midway up the stairs inside one of the mansion’s spires.

Archie, several steps ahead, is on his hands and knees, feeling through the goo-oozing bricks in the walls. They really commit to their Haunted Houses in Greendale, Barry thinks. He wasn’t even sure if the spires were part of the performance piece. It’s pretty inaccessible – they had to break through several doors and fight through ghouls to get here, and even though the steps are made of solid brick, the edges are jagged and it seems like they could fall off at any second.

Barry ran into Archie at the beginning of the Haunted House, where a bunch of ghouls put bags over their faces and whisked them away into a room together. He was pretty annoyed at first – he’d wanted to stick by Iris the entire night, but Archie’s a solid guy. He also happens to know a lot about these Haunted Houses, including some secret scavenger hunt that Barry's now been dragged along to.

“Don’t worry about it, that was just Cheryl,” Archie says, tugging on a brick.

“Do you think she’s in trouble? Should we go and check?”

He waves him off. “Cheryl’s fine. You get used to it when you spend enough time with her. On prom night, we found her in the woods absolutely howling like it was nobody’s business, and her girlfriend, Toni, was yelling at the rest of us asking where she was. So I ran out to look for her and I found her with her dress torn—caught in a tree or something. I asked her if she was hurt or anything, but she was just upset that she’d ruined her outfit.”

Barry leans into the wall and folds his arms. “Why was she in the woods?”

Archie furrows his brows and pauses. “I actually don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

Huh. That doesn’t reassure him in any way, shape or form. He thinks about speeding down and checking it out, but it’s risky – he doesn’t know this place; it’s dark and people might notice the lightning; and he doesn’t want to be a spoilsport about it if it was all a harmless scare.

Besides, Archie’s pulling bricks out of the wall like a madman now, and Barry is worried about the structural integrity of this place.

“Hey, are we sure this is safe? I mean—this mansion looks pretty old.” Barry kneels down and looks at the gaping alcove in the wall.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it. My dad worked in construction,” Archie says, matter-of-factly. He reaches in to grab something. “This is it.”

His hand gets stuck. The long sleeve of his Victorian coat gets bunched up and torn as he’s trying to pull his arm out. He mutters a quiet ‘ah, shit’ under his breath, but that’s the extent of his reactions.

“Okay, don’t panic,” Barry says. Archie simply tilts his head and looks at him with deadpan awareness. Barry tries to remove the surrounding bricks, but none of them will budge. How did Archie pull them out so easily? He considers phasing him out using his speed. He huffs, realizing that this is the only way.

“All right, just—close your eyes, okay? I’ll try something,” Barry says, as Archie nods.

He vibrates his arm through the bricks, but something catches onto him. Spikes, all over his hands and wrist bite down like teeth. He hears bones crunching and blood spilling out and yells. It seems to have gotten Archie too, by the way he’s twisting his face in pain.

“What the hell is that?” Archie hisses, desperately trying to tug his hand out. He looks over at Barry and realizes that his hand is stuck halfway through the wall. “Dude, how did you get your hand in there?”

The thing still has its teeth on Barry – which shouldn’t be possible, he’s moving too fast – but he manages to find Archie’s fist and grabs hold of it, vibrating them both out of the wall. He looks at his hand and rolls up the mangled sleeves of his baby blue cotton jumper, which Iris had bought for him at Uniqlo.

Right. Blood. His skin looks like it’s been shredded apart by a feral animal with a hundred tiny teeth. He uses his speed to put all of the bricks back in place, hopefully sealing that thing back where it came from.

Archie is writhing on his back, clutching his bloody hand with the other. He’s still gripping tightly onto the silver key retrieved from the wall. Barry shakes his head. Secret scavenger hunt—so not worth it.

His super healing is already kicking in, but the same can’t be said for Archie.

“We need to get you to Caitlin,” Barry says, helping him up. “She’s a doctor.”

“Can’t,” Archie says, as Barry steadies him on his feet. He holds up the key in his hand. “We have to finish this.”

“Look, I know you think that you have to win this challenge or whatever, but it’s not worth it. Trust me. Something’s seriously wrong with this Haunted House—we need to warn the others and leave.”

“We can’t leave,” Archie finally spits out.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this isn’t just some game. This is a real Haunted House,” Archie says, washed with guilt. “Well, it turns into one if someone accepts a challenge from the Devil. And the challenge has to be executed completely, or else we all die.”

Barry lets out the longest sigh he’s ever let out in his entire life.

Before Barry gets the chance to interrogate Archie about the exact terms of this Devil’s deal, a crackling sound interrupts them. It echoes all the way up the spires. Like an old radio, the sound is layered with noise, but one sound is unmistakable: the demonic vibrations of an old enemy, growling like a festering nightmare.

_“Barry Allen. . . Tonight, you will die.”_


End file.
